In the Name of Allaah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful…

I have recently heard someone quoting the following statement as a hadeeth of the Messenger of Allaah (may Allaah raise his rank and grant him peace):

من تعلم لغة قوم أمن مكرهم

“Whoever learns a people’s language shall be safe from their plots”

I would like to offer some important points regarding this so-called “hadeeth”:

[1] It is NOT a hadeeth, rather it is considered “laa asla lahu” (baseless).

After careful research, I could not find any basis for this statement as a hadeeth, nor as a statement of a Companion or early scholar.  After exhausting the usual source books of hadeeth, I searched in the books of “Ahaadeeth Mushtaharah” which discuss claimed hadeeths that are commonly quoted by people, and in the books of “Mowdhoo’aat” (fabricated and baseless hadeeths), and I again did not find a trace.

The only reference to it I could find from a trusted scholar was something mentioned by Shaykh Muqbil ibn Haadee al-Waadi’ee (may Allaah have Mercy on him) who Continue reading →